studioporn

since i can't make much more progress on the studio drywall until i get the ductwork noise stuff straightened out, i've been focusing on the bathroom area with help from aiton and disco. we got the majority of the greenboard up:

Posted by Len at 09:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HVAC stuff is gonna be the death of me, i swear.

so the liquid vibration dampening stuff i ordered on friday? i just called them today to check on the status of the order since i hadn't heard anything. the answer i got was, "oh. um. see, we don't actually carry that stuff anymore. we really should take that web page down. uh, sorry about that, we'll refund your money."

i went ahead and ordered the noisekiller product instead. hopefully it'll get here by early next week, as i'm behind enough as it is on drywalling. part of me wants to just say fuck it and go ahead with the drywall and just live with whatever ductwork noise is there currently. but i know if i do that i'm going to regret it every single time i record someone or something quiet.

i really wish i could be visited by a future me who could tell me this is all going to come together at some point an that all this frustration is going to be worth it in the end. all i want is a space where i can do right by musicians, a space where they can come and have a great time and make kick-ass recordings. but that goal just keeps slipping further and further into the distance.

Posted by Len at 09:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

aiton helped me with strapping, insulation, and drywall this morning, and i put up a few more pieces after he left. the east wall and the remainder of the north wall are done now:

Posted by Len at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

dehumidifier was installed today and the remaining ductwork was completed.

i'm a bit bummed by the amount of space taken up in the basement for the dehumidifier ductwork. in fact, i'm too bummmed right now to take a picture and show people. but aesthetics aside, it's a pretty cool setup and this should help the studio stay drier than a mormon frat party (where "drier than a mormon frat party" is defined as 40% RH) year-round. i still have to play with all the fresh air intake stuff.

i'm still a tad concerned about the noise through the ductwork. even though the supply lines are insulated on the outside, nothing is lined on the inside. air on metal has a way of making vibrations and noise, so i've been trying to find a way to dampen the vibrations. lining the duct with standard materials isn't an option, since most linings are at least 1" thick. that kind of thickness would really cut into the surface area of the duct, which is something i really don't want.

this has taken me down the route of investigating liquid vibration dampeners. these spray or brush on to a surface and convert noise/vibration energy into heat energy. the two most promising products i looked at were quietcote and noisekiller. the two products are very similar in all regards, and i ended up going with quietcote for no other reason than the fact that they say it can be brushed on. i'm going to have to rip down a fair amount of non-flex ductwork, brush this stuff onto the insides, and put it back up.

Posted by Len at 05:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

woohoo! the new furnace has been installed:

this thing is all energy efficient (not the highest 96.6% efficiency rating, but damn close at 93%). it's also damn quiet. like one of the quietest furnaces i've ever heard in my life. if i open the door to the basement, i can only very faintly hear the blower.

they're coming back tomorrow morning to do the dehumidifier.

Posted by Len at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

last night i began to suspect that the way they were going to tie the dehumidifier into the studio would be problematic from a soundproofing perspective. both the supply and the return are 10" round duct, and their plan was to go straight through the concrete block and then through the studio wall with these. doorways and windows aside, whenever something needs to pass through both leaves of a double wall, it's really a good idea to offset the wall penetrations to help minimize crosstalk. i was especially concerned with the supply being so close to a noise source such as the furnace.

we tossed around a few ideas for rectifying this situation, but nothing seemed to quite pan out, owing in part to the rather large size of the duct. larry decided we should probably just scrap the plug-directly-into-the-studio plan and hook the dehmidifier up to the main house supply over by the furnace. which i thought was the original plan all along, but what do i know.

new furnace is being installed as i speak. dehumidifier may or may not get installed today.

Posted by Len at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

the dehumidifier is like twice the size i thought it was from the photos i was looking at last month. guess that's what i get for not looking at the specs:

one of the new guys working at the company specializes in airflow stuff, which is resulting in a wacky (but i think ultimately good) setup. instead of installing the dehumidifier near the furnace, where it would be difficult to get truly fresh air from the outside what with the dryer vent and bathroom exhaust vent and all, they decided it would be better to install the unit closer to the center of the house, pull in the fresh air from the completely opposite side of the house from the furnace, and plug directly into the studio. the idea is that the studio will be the first to get the fresh/dehumidified air, but it will then propagate through the rest of the house via the studio returns and we'll have fresh and dehumidified air everywhere.

this whole setup is proving to be a bit more involved than they originally thought, so the rest of the day today is going to be spent knocking out holes and running ductwork and stuff, and then they're coming back tomorrow to do the furnace/dehumidifier installation.

Posted by Len at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

HVAC guys finally came back out to finish up the ductwork and furnace stuff. i'm hoping everything will be done today, but we'll have to wait and see. the two guys who are here right now just have the dehumidifier and some ductwork pieces. no furnace or fittings. supposedly another 2 guys are coming later on with all that stuff.

Posted by Len at 08:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

dev and disco came over last night to help with drywalling. i decided to work on the main studio area tonight instead of the smaller rooms. i think i'm going to wait until the main drywall pile gets a bit lower before continuing with those rooms, since it's such a pain right now getting in and out of the vox booth.

i was an idiot when framing and did my 16-on-center markings at 0, 16, 32, 48.... instead of 0, 15 1/4, 31 1/4, 47 1/4...not a huge deal, but when i put a 4' x 8' sheet of drywall vertical against one end of the frame, there's no stud support for the other side since the 48" stud falls just beyond the end of the dywall. i've taken to shifting pieces over 3/4" so that each side of the drywall falls in the middle of a stud.

Posted by Len at 08:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ended up working solo today, which would've made it a bit difficult to do drywalling. so i focused on insulation stuff instead. i got insulation into most of the bays that jim and disco strapped yesterday, plus i strapped out some of the wackier bays. additionally, i got the idea yesterday that i should run all the between-room audio cabling along the floor between the room frames, which gave me the idea of adding a few little access panels to the spaces between the rooms in case i ever need to add/change wiring. i framed out one panel in the main room and two more in the iso/storage room, which will allow me to get at all the critical spaces between all the rooms.

al came by and applied his mad masonry skillz to getting the glass block installed in the bathroom. this involved knocking out a bunch of channeled blocks and brick sills and god only knows what else and then making the resulting hole a bit smaller so that the glass block would fit more snugly and not require an inch (or more) of mortar going all the way around. he also patched up the suboptimal mortaring job i did on the two bricks around the vent hood.

i need to go back and fix up the furring strips along that wall, but as soon as i've done that, all systems are go for drywalling the bathroom.

Posted by Len at 05:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

today's work ended up being a bit more drywall prep than drywall, but we still got a lot done. tommy and i worked on drywall while disco and jim worked on installing the support straps for the insulation.

both ended up being a bit of a pain in the ass. it would have been a hell of a lot easier for everyone if i had installed the straps back when i was framing, but at the time i had not even the faintest clue that deferring this might be an issue. in spite of this, jim and disco got a huge portion of the walls all strapped up.

as for drywall, we had some complications of our own to deal with. we started with the concrete block wall at the front of the house, which called for attaching the drywall directly to the block using a combination of liquid nails and tapcon screws. space in the iso rooms was tight, there's still a huge pile of drywall blocking the entrance to the vox booth, the protruding lip from the french drain presented some complications, and for some reason the tapcon screws were being a real bitch today and we had to keep re-drilling holes and tossing stripped screws. but we did finally finish the first layer of drywall all along that wall, and fortunately this was the most difficult space to drywall and thus everything else from here on out should be a good bit easier. here are some pics of the drywall and straps:

Posted by Len at 06:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

in less than 24 hours the studio will finally start getting walls! woohoo!

hvac stuff won't be finished until next week, so we'll have to leave the ceilings (and part of one wall) open. there's a 50-50 chance the mason will come over the weekend to take care of the glass block for the bathroom window. as soon as that's done i can start drywalling the bathroom as well.

jim, tommy and disco are all stopping by to help tomorrow. we're gonna split up into pairs and work on different parts of the studio/basement in parallel. expect lots of photos to be posted over the next few days.

Posted by Len at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

barring any problems, drywalling will begin on saturday.

electrical inspector signed off today on all of the fixes the electricians made, so i'm good to go as far as permits are concerned.

talked with HVAC guy today. dehumidifier is in, so remaining ductwork/furnace/dehumidifier installation will happen either end of this week or next week. we discussed the issue of the excessive air velocity and there are a few options on the table. one of the more promising ones involves putting tees on the problematic runs to divide the current single register into 2 separate ones, making for lower velocity across each.

the rest of this week is devoted to final touches, which at this point is just finishing up the bulkhead and corner framing in the vox booth and a few other odds and ends.

Posted by Len at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

i've decided that when it comes time to paint the walls and ceiling in the studio, i'd like to enlist the help of someone with madder art and/or interior decorating skills than i. basically, i want to have a room where people will come in and go "wow, this is {cool,hip,different,inspiring,etc.}" but in a more ambient sort of way--i don't want the walls to become the center of attention of the room, but i do want them to help underscore the sorts of feelings and emotions most useful to have while recording.

anyway, do any of you know of any starving artists who would have some good ideas in this area and would like to earn a few bucks? if you know bona fide interior decorators, that would be useful too, but my preference is for current-student or just-graduated artists who really need the cash. i also want to leave the door open for wilder or more unconventional ideas that might work well in this space, so "think different' types would be a plus.

Posted by Len at 07:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

since drywall will be starting "any day now," i decided that this weekend i should get off my ass and finish up the remaining framing odds and ends. all that's left is to finish up the bulkheads and put up a few more furring strips in the bathroom. i've just been having trouble getting motivated to knock these out with everything else going on lately.

one thing that's been causing me grief with the bulkheads is that the doorways into both iso rooms are framed for standard 80" door heights, which is several inches higher than the bottom of the support beam that passes through both rooms. i've been driving myself insane trying to figure out how to handle the bulkhead area between the doorway and the beam until today, when i realized i was an idiot and everything would be 10 times easier if i just made the doorways shorter and put a couple more bulkhead 2x4s above the door frames.

here's how the vox booth doorway looked originally:

and after dropping it down 5 inches:

i did the same exact thing to the other room and finished up the bulkhead in there. here's how it looks from inside the room:

a nice side effect of lowering the doorways is that i can now use double doors for both iso rooms, since the interior doors would be low enough to clear the beam when they open. this will provide better sound insulation yadda yadda yadda.

Posted by Len at 07:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

wooo! 100th blog entry!

electricians came this morning and fixed all the problems turned up in the inspection. i didn't think they'd be able to take care of that this week, so that was a nice surprise. it also looks like all the paperwork finally went thorugh for the permit, so i should be able to get moving on the final inspection and be on my way to drywall.

still no word yet from the HVAC guys regarding the dehumidifier. i'm going to call kevin today and see where things stand. i'm also going to see what we can do about the remaining ductwork and my concern about noise in a couple of the runs.

since i'm still in a holding pattern on drywall, i think i'm going to dart down to baltimore this weekend for a long-overdue visit with some family and friends.

Posted by Len at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)